The idle musings of a former military man, former computer geek, medically retired pastor and now full-time writer. Contents guaranteed to offend the politically correct and anal-retentive from time to time. My approach to life is that it should be taken with a large helping of laughter, and sufficient firepower to keep it tamed!

This seems to be the difference between openly carrying an assault rifle in public vs concealed carry; it openly flouts a lack of sense and proportion. If you think that antipollution devices negatively affect your engine's performance (and they do on diesels), disconnect them and be on your way. All this will do is bring on a greater crackdown on everyone.

If Liberal Intellectual Radical Progressive heads would explode when confronted with contradictions to common sense that trivial, their heads would explode early in their indoctrinations and they wouldn't be a present problem.

It is apparent that those commenting on these trucks don't know what they are talking about. how is this any worse than Algore's gargantuan carbon footprint? Or an e- car driver thinking his car is not running on COAL?

They usually put those pipes on diesel trucks. If they get their turbos tuned up good they can't hear anything in the cab. Around here they usually run those stacks until their trucks come off warranty then they can remove all they EPA crap and crank up the turbo so they put regular pipes on again.

To state it is conservatives doing this is a stretch. What is Business Inside's agenda here? From what I've observed in GA it is primarily younger men driving these trucks; a demographic with ill defined political direction. It is however one with limited self control. I personally find a significant percentage of the Prius/other electric car drivers I've encountered to be sactimonious fools entirely deserving of a good smoking....but the overfuelled diesels are equally obnoxious.

AFAIK diesels smoke when they are running rich under full throttle, which helps keep the engine from destroying itself under insane boost levels. That's why you'll usually see a thick smoke plume whenever one of those 1500+ hp diesel trucks is putting down a 9-second quarter mile; the smoke plume is a side effect of the power and boost levels. It also only occurs under full throttle, since smoking all the time would be a really good way to foul up your motor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORrN6utJuUU

These trucks idle and cruise cleanly if done right. Diesel Power magazine is a good read on the genre, though I'm more into high-revving V6's and cars that can dance.

As to vertical stacks, those are a way to use a large-diameter pipe for good exhaust flow without having to route it through the truck's underbody, and have no effect on smoke generation whatsoever. Some drag trucks use stacks coming out of the hood, but for street trucks it is more practical to have them come up behind the cab. It seems to me that if you wanted to smoke out tailgaters, though, then under-the-bumper pipes would be far better than stacks.

I suppose if one had the ability to generate a smoke screen simply by flooring it, then the temptation to dump on one of those ubiquitous high-beam tailgaters would be overwhelming at times...but that article spinning it as "ZOMG ppl are modding their trucks to offend me" seems to be kind of a reach to me.

In CA, when you replace a catalytic convertor, the State Approved type is much smaller than the OEM cat. The OEM one must last at least 100k miles, per fed regs. Mine lasted 150k. Judging by the test results after one year, it will certainly fail the test by the time it goes in for it's CA mandated test that is done every two years.

The problem is that the mandated cats are approx 62-67% volume of the OEM cat. Done by a shop, that is a recurring cost of around $600 to install a new cat every time you get your car smog tested. I'm told that the CARB people who engineered this are bureaucrats and exhaust manufacturers.

These small cats also affect how well the motor runs, as it is a noticeable restriction in exhaust flow, and may also hurt fuel mileage a bit.

It would seem that CA is trying to remove older cars with this rigged setup. This will eventually kill the resale value of cars that are beyond the car makers warrantee.

You can't replace them with an oem cat, since they do not come with CA's approved numbers marking them. Doesn't matter if it passes the test, it must have an approved cat installed, or it fails the visual equipment part of the inspection.

In addition, CA is already changing the smog test numbers on vehicles equipped with a carburetor (pre '87, IIRC), according to a smog tech I know. They no longer will pass.

It's funny from here, but I suspect if I came across one on the road- and we've got people over here who'd think this is incredibly awesome -I'd be more inclined to premeditated homicide than laughter.